The Masks of a Man
by Ruthless
Summary: The differences between Nathan Wallace and Rupert Giles were not as extreme as they may have seemed.


Disclaimer- I own nothing to do with BtVS or the absolutely stunning Repo! The Genetic Opera…Or Behind Blue Eyes, for that matter. This was written purely for entertainments sake.

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**The Masks of a Man**

_No one knows what it's like…_

Know-one did know. To have seen the things he's seen, to have done and known the things that he has, to have suffered the pain that he's known.

Even simply thinking about it sometimes, caused more pain than it was truly worth.

_To be the bad man…_

He's caused pain as well as suffered from it. He's torn apart futures and lives, sometimes because he had no choice, and sometimes simply for the sake of it, with a song in his heart and a grin on his face.

_Villain, monster, killer, demon, assassin, murderer, killer, killer, killer, Nathan…_

In his old life, and his knew life he's been known as many things, by a multitude of different names.

Some mesh.

Killer.

An innocent man, here, who carried a dark god in his mind, people, innocent people, guilty of doing nothing more then missing a payment.

Demon.

A different demon in the past, a different demon in the future…

In the past it was possession.

Here, in the future, it's simply him.

And some don't mesh.

Monster.

What is more monstrous than a human man that now stands for everything that he once stood against?

_I'm only living out a lie…_

In the past he tried to be what he wasn't he tried to be the bad man, the rebel without a cause.

Tried to make him-self act without regard for consequences, tried to fool him-self into thinking that he didn't care for those who were hurt because of what he did.

Then when he became what he was ment to be, the lie was denying his past.

These days the lie is a far worse one.

He's cared for only two people in this dark world, Marnie and Shilo, wife and daughter. His lie is to the only living person that he loves, and it hurts only the one that he cares for.

She doesn't know that he's a killer.

She doesn't know that he's making her sick to keep her safe.

_If my fist clenches crack it open…_

Here and there he's always had a bit of a problem with his temper, his anger.

He hurts, so he hurts others.

_When I smile tell me some bad news…_

Bad news plagues him, and even more so when he feels he's settling in life.

In the distant past it was a close friend that he loved, and whom the loss of, he found devastating.

It had been this loss that had caused him to question his life, and what he existed, lived, and acted for. And it was in an attempt to avoid experiencing this sort of loss again, that he changed.

Over a decade later, he tried to love again, with Jenny.

Beautiful, dark-haired gypsy Jenny…

And the fall-out _wasn't_ personal.

No, she was stolen from him.

And several decades later, he stole the lover of someone else; repaying what he'd been dealt, passing the pain on to another.

He'd tried being the bad guy. And he'd tried to be the white hat.

He'd always used to appreciate irony. Not so much when the joke is on him however.

He loved, he lost, he caused others to lose, and he lost again.

From Ethan, to Jenny, to the surrogate daughter Buffy, through to Marnie, and the child that he'd always longed for, Shilo.

_He _called him Ripper; _she _called him Rupert; she knew him as Giles, as her Watcher; and moving on –_she _had called him Nathan, or love; and she'd called him by the title that he'd always dreamed of –she called him _father, daddy, _or _dad._

_How much of it genetics, how much of it is fate?  
__How much of it depends on the choices that we make?_

Sometimes, after all is said and done, he's almost certain that he can hear the dark, rolling laughter of fate, as everything comes undone, and falls apart, and falls into new places.

_So many years, resenting the years._

He's known rage, and anger.

He's known resentment and disappointment, and disgust.

_I have hated and loved you._

He's hated, and he's loved, and he's been hated and loved.

He's met every single challenge that they've forced in his direction, even though he hasn't always done it was grace, or style.

_Legal assassin…_

There are some things that never change.

Rules are always changing; and it's not everyone on the playing field that gets the memo.

For the most part he stays within the rules- does what has been required of him. When he had to send his Slayer to her first grave he did it.

When he had to drug her he did it- even though he broke the rules shortly afterwards.

He stepped outside the rules, when he took Marnie for himself, too- even though afterwards he followed every rule that was laid before him.

He was told to kill, to repossess what had been _borrowed_, and he did… at least until the point where it would have been a friend's life that was price.

He followed the rules where it suited him.

He broke them to protect those few that he _loved._

It didn't matter whether they called him Rupert Giles or Nathan Wallace.

In the end, in spite of all the masks, to separate him from the world- the populace, outside, or perhaps even because of them, he was nothing more and nothing less than a man.


End file.
